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Category Archives: Crafts

It’s been a while since I posted craft projects. It’s not because I haven’t made anything, but because the entire cardmaking blogosphere is on Blogspot and I’m obviously on WP. There are DIY bloggers on WordPress or self-hosted blogs too. One of them, Paige, inspired me to make button art. Unfortunately, my first project turned out so bad that my husband had a hard time making out which shapes I’d made and therefore I didn’t want to ask him to take a picture. I want to make button art again, but not now.

A few weeks ago, the activity staff at my ward introduced me to felt flowers she’d bought at Action. These were readymade, but you can also easily cut them out of felt yourself. Make sure you have three different sizes. Each flower should have a hole in it. You’ll also need a button and some ribbon.

Thread the button through to the middle of the ribbon. Add the flowers, starting small to large. Tie a knot and you’re done. In the picture below, my activity staff tied the flower to a chair./PP>

Last week, I was thinking about making a card but hadn’t brought my supplies and was tired of die-cut images. The activity staff suggested I use a felt flower for my card too. Because we didn’t use the ribbon, she sewed it together for me and then we glued it onto the card. I wonder what it’d look like with the ribbon on. Instead, I glued a ribbon to the card border.

One of my goals for this year was to spend more time on my hobbies, which include blogging and crafting. As you can see, I’ve been fairly active in the blogging department. I’ve also spent quite some time crafting. Last week, the idea of taking on new crafty challnges set out in my mind. While I stuck with cardmaking, I did try a new technique and finally got to use the orca brads that have been lying in my stash forever. I hope this is indeed the right image as I keep forgetting to give my cards descriptive file names.

The card base is off white and 10×10 cm (around 4×4 inch). I got it from a cardstock pack I found at the local supermarket a while back. On top is a layer of blue cardstock thaat’s 8×8 cm and came from the same pack. The top layer is stuck on the base with 3D foam squares, so it is a bit raised. I stuck the brads into the top layer, which was really hard and with which I needed tsome help. I don’t know what color the brads are. In the four corners of the base are blue pearls.

Then this week the activity staff who came around on Monday brought some die-cut images. I had never worked with die-cut images except when someone sent me readymade ones, but I was excited to try them out. They are to be punched out, which I did on my own. I got help positioning the parts of the image correctly. The card I used was readymade. I am really looking forward to going to the store these images were bought at so that I can buy some myself someday.

When I showed my first handmade bracelet to the staff on my ward, several nurses requested I make one for them. It took me severl weeks to get this one finished, and so far this one nurse is the only one who’s given me specific directions on what to make for her.

The beads are made of two colors of polymer clay selected by the nurse from my stash. They are ultramarine Fimo Classic and pastel mint Fimo Effect. The mint may look a bit blueish and I at one point thought I might’ve confused it with the blue ice quartz. As with another bracelet I’ve previously posted, I rolled the two colors of clay into a jelly roll. I really need to learn to make canes, but will get to that later. I got very uneven beads from my first try so made some more and chose the best I had. They’re still each more different than the ones on the other polymer clay bracelet I’ve made, but they’re okay. As usual, I strung the beads onto elastic wire. I fear the bracelet is a little too tigght, but we’ll see. Forgot to take it back to the ward when my husband had photographed it, so the nurse will need to wait to get it.

I’ve not made much jewelry lately. In fact, this piece is over a month old, but I never got down to posting it. It is intended as a Christmas present for my sister, and I want to make another one (with different beads, but I’ve yet to decide what I want besides rose quartz) for my mother.

The green beads are aventurine and the brown ones are jasper. I didn’t know there’s brown jasper until I foudn these. I bought them at a lovely shop that sells all kinds of gemstone beads. I can’t remember what the dolphin is made of. Since my husband photographed it, I don’t know what side of the dolphin is visible. It is blue on one side and metallic (I’m thinking silver) on the other.

It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S., but today, I have a hard time feeling thankful. Yet I want to turn my disappointments into opportunities. Like, I got kicked out of the comment exchange group that’s gotten me most traffic to this blog in the past couple of days. I don’t know why and the onwer didn’t bother to send me a message. Like, I had been accused of posting negative comments, but had apologized because I was unaware that most people want positivity only, not just on their blog posts but on the prodducts/recipes/etc. they are writing about. I don’t see why I can’t say that a recipe that’s loaded with cheese is not for me, but well. Anyway, turning this into an opportunity means I can again blog about what I want without needing to take into account readers whose only reason for checking out my blog is that they have to.

I’m also thankful in a similarly twisted way for having dropped out of a Chrismtas cardmaking challenge a few weeks ago. This was costing me a lot of energy and leading me to create quick cards that should’ve landed in the bin right after posting them to the chalenge group. (The other members don’t judge my cards because they know I’m blind, which I’m not sure what I think of it.) Now I have more time and energy to devote to making better cards, and honestly I’m pretty satisfied with this one. Of course it’s not as good as a card made by someone who can see, is not as clumsy as I am, and has been making cards longer, but this one is okay with me.

For the flower, I used Nellie Snellen dies. I embossed the side strip with a Cuttlebug embossing folder. The yellow and pink cardstock I used for the flower and side strip come from a large Bazzill cardstock pack. The purple base comes from a pack I bought at the local supermarket.

Lately I’ve been enjoying polymer clay and particularly have been making beads out of it. I also have bought a number of jewelry-making supplies, such as gemstone and glass beads, charms and wire. Here are my first two bracelets.

This one my husband nicknaemd the Ado The Hague bracelet after a Dutch football club. I think the football club’s colors are yellow and green, while the bracelet truly has golden glitters in it, but I’m not sure that it shows on the picture. I used green and golden glitter Fimo Effect and rolled two rolls into what I believe to be a jelly roll. Then I cut beads out of that, then had them lie around forever after baking before I strung them together on elastic wire. I am soon going to make a similar one in different colors for a nurse here.

This one got nicknamed the Christmass bracelet for its green stars. They are made out of turquoise I believe. The golden beads are glass beads. I strung these onto a metal wire and attached the clasp. I got some help with that bit, but must say I can do it mostly independently now.

I am extremely tired due to a combination of a lengthy eye doctor visit – it consisted mostly of waiting -, physical pain, and overload due to a very hectic fire drill. I might write about the eye doc visit tomorrow or some other time, or I might not, but right now I just have time for a quickie. As promised, therefore, here is my colored sand card. It is a simple Christmas tree, which I cut out of double-sided sticky foil using the smaller one of the lovely Marianne Design dies. I used gold-colored Sandy Art sand. The stars that fly over the Christmas tree are from my stash. The green cardstock base comes from a pack I bought at the supermarket for much less than it’d cost at the craft store.

Thanks lovely readers for all the nice coments on yesterday’s post and thanks for the follows. If you’ve only visited yesterday’s post, I want you to know this is more of a general blog with an assortment of posts, some of which can get pretty involved. However, I’m loving craft blogging again so here are a couple more cards. Both of these have a 3D effect to them. The first was done using die cuts from a die cut pack, and the second was done using a lovely set of Christmas tree dies by Marianne Design. I am not able to use regular cut-outs, but these were simple enough so that I could build up the image.

Edit: oops, discovered I already posted that first card earlier. Sorry for anyone who’s seen it twice.

I used to have a crafting blog that I posted regularly to. However, as time progressed and my cardmaking did not, I lost interest in posting pretty simple, childish-looking cards. I still made at least one per week for a Christmas card challenge, but only so that I wouldn’t be kicked out of the group that ran it. Since I moved to my current institution in June, also, my individual art therapy sotpped, and the group I attend is pretty demanding of independence. I want to transfer to a less demanding group, but have not yet been able to speak to my named nurse on this.

I’ve been looking for crafts that didn’t require sight, and on a Facebook group for crafters with chronic illness, someone mentioned quilling. So I bought a quilling starter kit a few weeks ago and have been playing with it. First, I designed – or rather, didn’t design – a random pattern. I didn’t take note of or get feedback on the colors or shapes.

I decided not to finish the random pattern because it really felt like a waste of paper. Last Tuesday, it popped into my mind to make an actual design, and the simplest would be to make a card border. I used purple, pink, green and blue quilling paper. I only found out as I was finishing the project yesterday how to make the holes in the coils smaller. I use the needle tool because I can’t manage to put the paper into the slot of the slotted tool. I’m not sure how to make the holes as small as they are on the few ovals that one of my staff made using the slotted tool, but overall, I’m quite content with this card. The cardstock and the center flower are from my stash.

I have been trying out a few other crafts, like polymer clay, with which I made a number of jelly roll beads. I have not yet been able to make them into a bracelet or necklace, because some essential jewelry-making supplies have not yet arrived.

I also just today made a card using colored sand, but I’ll have to wait to show that one till my husband can take a pic, because I don’t want to damage the surface of my scanner with the sand.